Category Archives: Nature

Let the Dog See the Rabbit…

…as my father used to say. I don’t know about rabbits, it’s been possible for a small herd of hippos to find hiding places around here over the past few weeks such is the amount of stuff I have been moving from place to place and box to box. Last week it all seemed to reach a crescendo of chaos and, despite my inability to be tidy, I am debilitated by mess.

However, I think I am now on the verge of normal service being resumed. The studio is more or less fit for purpose and the bogeyman now has room to fit back under my bed (even the the dust bunnies have gone thanks to Kryton)

I’ve managed to keep up my Twenty Minuter pledge with little, in-front-of-the-telly sized projects, but between the box shifting and the vegetable plot not a lot of creativity has happened.

Outside though, Mother Nature has been as creative as only she can be, and the camera has been an essential part of Higgins walking equipment. One of the joys of blogging is the discipline it imposes on recording things to write about so this year I have far more images of the fleeting loveliness of the English Spring to keep the memories fresh.

I love the lush, multi shaded green-ness of May, with the sprinkling of bright spring flowers from Bluebells and Stitchwort, Speedwell and Queen Anne’s Lace, wild Plum and Apple blossom right down to the humble Dandelion and Dead Nettle.

The tulips have been lovely this year, and on a visit to Kit’s garden I found one which had obviously been wired up to the National Grid!

I do have a few of my own, but I think I will have to take a leaf out of Jane Brocket’s book for a more spectacular show next year.

The beautiful red tulips at the end of the garden are Higgins favourite. Unfortunately he thinks they are delicious and I caught him tearing round the lawn with one hanging out of the side of his mouth like Carmen Miranda! No picture alas, I couldn’t catch up…

I shall have to dash now and get a little parcel all packed up. I’ve been taking part in a bloggy swap organised by Emma of Em’s Shabby Shack and have a little pile of goodies ready to send off to my partner, Kelly of Kelly’s Recipe’s for Life. I shan’t show them to you just yet or I will spoil the surprise so watch out later in the week.

And don’t forget there is still another week to run on the 100 Post Giveaway so if you haven’t done so already don’t forget to enter the draw,

Back soon…!

Guest Post: Higgins and the Seal

Hello All, Higgins here! Being helpful again! Mum’s been busy in the garden all week. She says I’m not helpful there. At All…Grrrrmph….those green things are growing aren’t they? Why do they have to be in rows?

So I’m on the tappy thing. Do you want to hear about me going to the beach? I went with Auntie Aimee And Auntie Charlotte. Mum didn’t come. She can’t do long walks like we can. I had to wear my seat belt, it’s boring.

I like the beach but they said I had to wear my jumper.

That’s boring too…but it’s warm…I s’pose…

There’s a big bath at the beach, it’s called the sea. It’s very cold…not like my bath at home…and there was a thing, having a bath…

I thought it was dog, and we could play, but it didn’t have any EARS!! I’ve got lovely ears. Auntie Charlotte said it was a seal…

I think it wanted to play too…

…but it didn’t have any LEGS! I’ve got legs even though they’re only little … AND he didn’t have a towel…

My legs got a bit tired so I had to have a carry back to the car…

I had to have my jumper taken off…

… AND wear my seat belt…AGAIN!

…but I had a lovely day…THANK YOU!

P S. A big thank you to Charlotte for the great photos…

Higgins and the Robot

Ha! Now that’s got you wondering hasn’t it, and I’m not going to tell you about it till the end!

I’ve got quite a backlog of photos in the camera because all this tinkering with the blog and the studio has meant I’m really behind on posts. I was also full of good intentions to make pretty Easter things (I have to confess to 5 blown egg shells which didn’t get painted LAST Easter -I’ve forgotten the excuse I had then) . It’s been pretty inpossible to find any of my equipment however, seeing as it’s all packed in boxes in the spare room, and I’m trying to bring it all out slowly so I can sort it to avoid the minestrone type mixture of stuff I usually end up with when I’m working.

I did have wool and needles to hand though so I’ve been able to do a little knitting project AND write a knitting pattern so I have been putting in more than my twenty minutes of creativity a day.

Firstly, I managed to get a picture of the Twisted Hazel which I gave my Mother for Mother’s Day several years ago. It’s qite slow growing, and that first year had just the one catkin so it’s doing pretty well now.

The little daffodils sheltering underneath look so pretty. The miniature ones do so much better in this windy spot because they don’t get flattened as easily. It was even warm enough for not just one, but two ladybirds. I’ve only just spotted the second one.

With a birthday in the family this weekend and a celebratory lunch I’ve got the Easter Tree up and ready. This is where the painted eggs are supposed to hanging… Anyway, the little decorations look pretty, and the pink primroses set it off nicely.

Then there were the egg cosies, knitted in my favourite wool. (Hasn’t it gone a long way since I did all that dyeing last year? Time for a fresh batch with new colours very soon)

I’ve put the pattern in the tutorial section which you’ll find at the top under the banner.
And now for that robot… Several years ago a very clever person, someone who got their priorities in life just right, invented a robot vacuum cleaner. It was HUGELY expensive and I said at the time, if I ever win the lottery I’m having one of those. Well time went by …and I still haven’t won the lottery… but the price of the vacuum cleaner went down to a nearly sensible price, and Lakeland featured them in their catalogue and I thought ‘Why not?’ So Kryton came to live with us. He sits under the work top in the utility room until he’s needed, charges out with a triumphant little fanfare when he is switched on, trundles round the room humming and sucking away and spins frantically round on the spot with a blue light flashing when he finds a particularly filthy bit . Once he’s finished he wheels himself back to the docking station and parks himself with another fanfare before going back on charge, the light on top pulsing red like a heart beat. Occasionally we might have a little problem and Kryton stops, gives a mournful little toot and says, in a strongly American accented female voice, ‘Please clean Roomba’s brushes’ . I can’t tell you how disconcerting that was the first time that happened. Anyway, it’s great to be able to drink coffee and watch the vacuum doing its stuff without me and if that makes me sound totally lazy, well…

We also had an amusing moment when Higgins, as a very small puppy, went behind Kryton’s curtain and climbed on top, stood on the go button and rode out on top looking very surprised! Not a lot fazes Higgins, but you can imagine he’s not Kryton’s number one fan, especially when it chases him round the room with the filth detector light flashing. When I got to the end of the studio painting I took the vacuum out to clean the floor prior to painting it and, as Higgins does like to be in on everything, he joined in.

Sometime I must tell you about the day he met a seal…

The White Cube

The studio is finished and is scarily, eerily, white…. I feel I must exhibit something in there, this white cube. Actually Higgins has already done that for me. When Kit popped round to admire it and I proudly flung the door open there, in the middle of the room, was an artfully placed pile of poo…oh dear… a budding yBa?

It’s amazing what this whiteness does for a space. It means that whatever is placed in there suddenly asumes a huge importance. Even a pencil on a table, a coffee cup, a dirty sock becomes a statement. I’ve got to get in there with my stuff PDQ before the mystique scares me half to death.

The challenge is to fill it with colour and to stamp my personality on it and to get CREATIVE. I’ve been talking about it long enough. I’ve actually popped over to see Marmalade Rose and asked to join the Twenty Minute Challenge to instil a little discipline into the proceedings otherwise I could spend far too much time arranging things artistically on shelves…

In the meantime I’m going to add a little more colour to the blog. I’ve been popping out in the garden on and off wielding the camera and recording the fleeting moments of spring flowers in bloom. It’s a grey day today and the crocuses are over, but we can still enjoy them, and a little sunshine.

Underneath the weeping willow and the bottom of the garden, not fairies, but Iris reticulata…

…miniature cyclamen..

… the last of the snowdrops…

…and primroses.

That’s better. I’m now buoyed up to go and shift piles of books and start filling shelves…

p.s. If you haven’t done it already, don’t forget to put your name in the hat for the ‘Little Bird’ draw!

Growth Spurt

Over the last few days I’ve been watching a hyacinth growing…you can almost see it with the naked eye, but I recorded it more simply with daily photos…

It’s not the most floriferous hyacinth, nor the most colourful, but it’s scent is just as amazing as any of it’s more spectacular cousins and it’s filling the ground floor of the house with the smell of Spring.

Meanwhile, in the garden…

The crocuses seem to have pushed up over night. Hold on a minute though, what’s that brown shape in the top left hand corner…?

Just checking, are they edible?

From a dachshund point of view, the answer is probably yes…Oh dear…

Higgins has also had a growth spurt, the little black coat he wears for his walks has become like a sausage skin, so we decided to buy another one from Equafleece, this time in a more stylish colour. His immediate reaction when we tried it on him was “Oh, NO! A walk!” cue a mad dash to hide in his bed…

He’s just a little ‘weeny’, in every sense of the word!

Lurchers and Llamas

Ok, that’s it, we’re bored now…it’s all …too…WHITE….

We were off to the other side of the county today for lunch with my cousin and after a lovely day yesterday it was a pain to wake up to frost, ice and gloom and then sleet. We had a phone call from said cousin to warn us they had a couple of inches of snow, but as it seemed the main road was clear and they had a tractor to get us out of any trouble we might run into on the track to their farmhouse we decided to brave it.

Apart from the nice people, and the good food, we wanted to see their lurcher. They have two – lovely gentle dogs and I do love lurchers. ( We used to have one, an enormous blonde called Spike, who was a complete wus, having little Higgins was really going from the sublime to the ridiculous!) However the whole family was devastated about five months ago when the young one was stolen. Despite the theft being witnessed (and the dog being microchipped) a poster campaign, a reward being offered and information being past all round the county there were no clues or leads and every one was so upset.

Amazingly, and so happily, about three weeks ago she was found in a field somewhere near Skegness(quite a way from Norfolk) by a lady who runs a greyhound rescue centre who just happened to be driving along a road she had never travelled on before who recognised her from the poster that had been circulated. Because of her job she had a chip reader at home and was able to identify her and phone to give the good news. The whole thing hung on so many happy coincidences it was incredible, and although she was very thin when she first came home she is now looking good, and full of bounce (as the footprint in the middle of Higgins ‘ little jumper demonstrated)

So, a lovely Sunday roast, and syrup sponge and custard – heaven – and then a snowy, slippery walk to try and shift a couple of calories.

I did try to get a picture of both dogs together, but look at the difference in the leg length, Higgins never managed to catch up!

He did meet another creature for the first time….Fergus…

Which was quite interesting…

Mwah!

I don’t think I could cope with the real thing, but I did find another llama I would have loved to bring home…

Isn’t he gorgeous?

I found the monocrome theme continued…

…and although I love snowdrops…

I so long for some colour. So it was nice to get back for a cup of tea and look at my cousin’s latest knitting project. Craftiness runs in the family, and she is an expert on spinning,weaving, knitting, crochet and dyeing. This was a departure, freeform knitting and crochet. I’ve done a little and it’s fascinating, but this was spectacular. It’s a shame the light means the photos don’t really do it justice but WOW, after all that white, we need those colours!

It’s mainly hand dyed silk, with little bits of llama and hand spun fleece. I’ve just realised I was so excited I didn’t ask what the finished article would be, a knockout waistcoat?

It was a busy day, and very exciting for a small dog with very short legs. A lot of sleeping has been going on. Higgins has obviously been having colour withdrawal symptoms too. I bought a new fleece blanket yesterday, with the sofa bed that is going into the studio in mind. Higgins is testing it…

Planet Penny

Crafts, Needle Felting, Crochet, Patterns & Tutorials